Said finally getting his big chance in Cup

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Boris Said is no Young Gun.

The longtime sports car star is 42, yet hoping to match the recent success of some of the youthful stars in NASCAR's Nextel Cup series.

Said has driven a handful of races in NASCAR's top three series over the past nine years, but is getting his big chance in 2005. He will be in 10 to 15 Cup races with MBSutton Motorsports, a new addition to MB2/MBV Motorsports, which fields Chevrolets for Joe Nemechek and Scott Riggs.

"The best thing Boris has going for him is he got involved with an established team," said Nemechek, who has been giving Said considerable help in adjusting to oval racing. "He's going to have the same stuff I have.

"As long as he can adapt quickly, he's going to do well - and he can adapt quickly."

Said has sought for a long time a regular ride in NASCAR's top series.

"I've just been working and working and beating the door down and used a lot of phone calls up to get this chance," he said Monday during as the NASCAR Nextel Cup media tour. "I was going to keep trying until I got the chance."

Now, paired with veteran crew chief Frankie Stoddard, he has that chance. Said is determined not to waste it, beginning with the season-opening Daytona 500 on Feb. 20.

Last year, Said drove for MB2 in four races, finishing 10th in the non-points Budweiser Shootout at Daytona, sixth on the road course in Sonoma, Calif., 30th in Fontana, Calif., and 28th in the season finale in Homestead, Fla.

"I think last year was harder, making Homestead and Fontana without any real practice," he said. "This year, I'm much more prepared. I have my own crew chief, my own crew and my own cars. I think it's going to be easier."

CAR OF TOMORROW: Gary Nelson, who runs NASCAR's Research and Development Center in Concord, N.C., said the next generation stock car, dubbed "the Car of Tomorrow," is right on schedule.

"Actually, we're pretty excited about what's happening," Nelson said. "We've got several of them under construction, working with several teams now and, probably within the next couple of months we'll pick up several more teams now that they've got a lot of their '05 cars done.

"We've got a pretty exciting and aggressive schedule for the next couple of months."

The developmental car features a larger cockpit area - known as the greenhouse - a higher and wider profile to promote more aerodynamic drag - slowing the cars down - and new "crush zones" to better absorb impacts. NASCAR has built several of the cars and more are now being constructed for testing by the teams.

"Our schedule has always said that it will be ready near the end of this season to be on the track, but a lot of other factors come into play," Nelson said.

One of those factors is the season-ending Chase for the Nextel Cup championship, a 10-race, playoff-style format adopted for the Cup series in 2004.

"We didn't think about that two years ago when we started talking about the end of the '05 season," Nelson said.

Nelson said the original plan was to have the Cup teams run the new car in the fall 2005 race at Talladega Superspeedway, then bring it back for the season-opening Daytona 500 in 2006. But it was back to the drawing board after the Chase was adopted.

"With the Chase coming into the spotlight, either we'd have to come out (with the new car) before the Chase began or after the Daytona 500 next year," he said. "We're now reviewing that maybe we'd bring it out for one of the early races in '06."

Nelson said initially the teams will phase in the new cars, starting by building them only for short tracks or superspeedways. The most likely introduction would be at the spring 2006 race on the half-mile oval at Martinsville or on the 2.66-mile track at Talladega.

Some team owners weren't too pleased when NASCAR first came up with the idea of the Car of Tomorrow, but Nelson said the resistance has subsided considerably.

"The original misconception of the car owners was that we were going to draw a line one day and say 'No more old cars,' " Nelson explained. "New cars are being built every day, though.

"When you talk to the car owners and say, 'Hey, we want to phase it in. One day you stop building cars with the old design and start building cars with the new design and, when you get a few built up, then you start racing them.' They all started to understand that."

NO MONEY: Mark Martin doesn't expect NASCAR drivers to have a pension fund in the near future.

Fellow driving star Rusty Wallace last week said he would like to see the drivers covered by a fund for their retirement, but Martin doesn't see how it could be done.

"It would certainly be nice, but who is going to pay for it - the team owners, the sponsors, NASCAR, the tracks?" Martin asked. "It just doesn't seem very likely to happen. There's just too many variables involved."

Richard Petty, a seven-time champion who retired more than a decade ago, doesn't see much need for a drivers' pension.

"It took me 15 years to earn the first million dollars," said Petty, now a team owner. "Now, they pay those guys $1 million to walk from the bathroom to their car. I think they can take care of themselves."